Archive failure causes 5,000 x-ray studies to vanish at Oregon Hospital
St. Anthony Hospital in Oregon lost more than 5,000 x-ray studies recently due to a hard-drive crash in a GE Healthcare archive system. Because of the loss, which was discovered earlier in the year when some of the files could not be accessed, the hospital has issued letters to 900 patients informing them of the situation, according to an AP/Oregonian report.
"Four of the five hard drives crashed," said Jeff Drop, CEO at St. Anthony Hospital "GE tried to scrub the hard drives and get the images back, but they couldn't."
Drop added that the written reports for the images are still available. To help re-establish each patient’s medical record the hospital has offered to redo the x-rays at no cost, the AP/Oregonian reports.
To prevent this situation from recurring, GE has repaired the system and provided a second archive that will act as an archive mirror duplicate. Additional storage security will come with a new long-term archive off-site in Colorado, the news service said.
"Four of the five hard drives crashed," said Jeff Drop, CEO at St. Anthony Hospital "GE tried to scrub the hard drives and get the images back, but they couldn't."
Drop added that the written reports for the images are still available. To help re-establish each patient’s medical record the hospital has offered to redo the x-rays at no cost, the AP/Oregonian reports.
To prevent this situation from recurring, GE has repaired the system and provided a second archive that will act as an archive mirror duplicate. Additional storage security will come with a new long-term archive off-site in Colorado, the news service said.